An employee looks at his phone while sitting at his desk. Actor performance of story events.
An employee at a property management company faced a change in working arrangements when he started working under a new director after five years. This director consistently texted him during the late evening on weekdays, as well as on weekends. He felt that he deserved recognition for this out-of-hours work, so he started to log it as overtime on his timesheet in accordance with the company handbook.
However, the company soon flagged a problem with this, and HR decided on a trade-off in which he would be given a small promotion in order to do away with the overtime. As this offered less money, he rejected it, but he wasn't sure how to proceed going forward.
A boss sends a text while sitting at his desk. Not actual story subjects.
A or B: My boss texts me after hours, so I started logging each message as 15 minutes of overtime
I'm a coordinator at a commercial property management company. I've been there five years. I'm hourly, non-exempt, and I manage work orders for nine office buildings.
Our handbook says billable work is recorded in 15-minute increments when it's charged to a property account. That's how we track after-hours requests, and the rule is enforced pretty strictly. I've had timesheets kicked back for logging 10 minutes on a billable task.
In March, we got a new operations director. He texts a lot. Usually between 9 and 11 p.m. on weeknights, plus most Sunday afternoons.
"Quick question about the Meridian work order."
"Did the vendor confirm Monday?"
"When you get a sec."
They're not emergencies. Usually it's something he could have asked me the next morning. But if I don't answer, he's asking about it the next day.
In April, I counted 47 after-hours messages from him.
Starting in May, I began logging the time I spent dealing with them against the property account in 15-minute increments, the same way the handbook says other billable work is recorded. I keep the timestamps and the texts in a spreadsheet.
My first timesheet showed 11.75 hours of overtime over two weeks. The next one showed 12.5.
An employee responds to a text at his desk. Scene shown is a visual representation.
Payroll flagged it and copied HR. I got called into a meeting.
I brought the spreadsheet. By then I had 61 messages logged, with the time received, the property, and my response. Every entry matched a text I could show them on my phone.
The payroll manager looked at it and said, "These are all real. That's not the problem."
Then the operations director said the messaging was "just the nature of the role" and that "nobody clocks out at 5 anymore."
HR's solution wasn't to stop the after-hours texts. They offered to move me into a new "Coordinator II" position that would be salaried and overtime-exempt, with a $2,100 annual increase.
I asked, "So the fix for the after-hours work is to make it salaried?"
She said it was "a stability upgrade" and that most people would see it as a promotion.
The $2,100 doesn't come close to what the overtime would add up to if this kept happening. I declined for now and asked them to put the offer in writing, including the exemption classification. She said she'd check with legal about the wording.
They still haven't sent anything. The texts haven't stopped either. Last Sunday there were three.
A. The salaried role is more money and more stability, and logging every short text as 15 minutes could look unnecessarily adversarial. Declining a promotion over this could cost me more than the overtime is worth.
B. The company's own system records billable work in 15-minute increments. If I'm expected to handle work after hours, I should be able to record that time too. Making the position overtime-exempt doesn't solve the reason the overtime exists in the first place.
His employer knew that he hadn't done anything wrong, but clearly, they wanted to maximize the work that the director was able to get out of him. It is understandable to be resentful of that if it wasn't in the job description before, especially if it isn't being compensated properly. This job definitely seems to fall into the category of one that doesn't have to be urgent. It doesn't seem to be worth the stress.
An employee works on his laptop at his desk.
Option C. Don’t engage with the boss after hours if it is not an emergency
You need to have a conversation with your boss where you explain that these texts count as billable overtime. I bet he is sending the texts so he doesn't forget to ask the next morning (my generous take).
Maybe you can work out a system where he can message you on a work platform (Teams/Slack/email) after hours but you have it muted after hours. And then you respond next morning when you're back on the clock.
But I don't understand why a salaried position automatically means working overtime. I am in academia but in academia and biotech industry people who are salaried still don't work after 5pm, unless they want to.
In the US, a company cannot just decide they’d rather not pay overtime and reclassify someone as exempt. The job has to meet certain criteria. What is different about the “promotion” duties that makes it exempt-eligible?
The tiny change in compensation (basically $1 per hour?!) makes it obvious this is bull.
Option C. Do not answer after hours. Formally Decline the salaried position if they finally make a formal offer.
There is nothing that happens in commercial property management after 5:00 that cannot wait until the next business day. Unless it is a true property emergency that must be handled immediately.
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